Niels Leermakers, a Ph.D. candidate from Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands, visited the CRF for four months to collaborate with Mark Musculus on a DOE project to better understand details of the temporal and spatial evolution of soot and soot precursors under low-temperature combustion (LTC) conditions. Working in the heavy-duty optical diesel engine laboratory, Niels developed and implemented a multiple laser–based optical diagnostic technique to gain new insight into the early stages of soot formation. Niels’ work successfully achieved the DOE goals, showing that under LTC conditions, soot precursor formation is more broadly distributed in both space and time than for conventional diesel combustion. This work also complemented Niels’ dissertation efforts at Eindhoven, where Niels works in the combustion engines group of Professors Bengt Johansson and Philip de Goey.

Antony Misdariis
6/16/2013-9/13/2013
Host: Joe Oefelein

Antony Misdariis, a visitor from CERFACS, a French research organization that develops advanced methods for numerical simulation of complex problems, performed collaborative research in large eddy simulation of turbulent combustion at high-pressure conditions. This work aided in the development of models that simulate the injection of liquid fuels into combustion devices at thermodynamically supercritical conditions. Because high-pressure combustion phenomena are important to all transportation, propulsion, and power systems, new predictive models of such phenomena are critical to designing these systems.

Brian McDonald
6/17/2013-9/20/2013
Host: Robert Barlow and Bob Harmon

Brian McDonald, who is working on an MS degree in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, made significant contributions on several fronts during his summer internship at the Turbulent Combustion Laboratory. Specifically, he performed LabView programming for a new data acquisition platform and did extensive tests on flow calibration accuracy. He also helped setup and debug a newly expanded Raman/Rayleigh/LIF detection system and assisted with preparations for a visiting turbulent jet flame experiment from the University of Sydney.

Magne Haveraaen
7/15/13-8/8/2013
Host: Karla Morris

During several weeks at the CRF, Magne Haveraaen collaborated on developing software for a solver application using coarrays, a new feature of Fortran 2008 that provides the programming language with parallel programming supports. The new software—which demonstrates the use of domain-specific, object-oriented software design patterns to ease the evolution of partial differential equation (PDE) solver software based on vector and tensor calculus expressions—helps advance research on platform-agnostic high performance computing. Magne is the head of Bergen Language Design Laboratory (BLDL) at the University of Bergen and is one of the developers of the Magnolia programming language, which is motivated by coordinate-free numerics and high performance support.

Avinash Gadok
7/12/2013-8/16/2013
Host: Carl Hayden

Avinash Gadok, a bioengineering graduate student from University of Texas (UT), Austin, visited our labs for one month over the summer. During her stay, Avi used minimal sets of proteins on artificial lipid membranes to reconstruct the protein assemblies that cells use to encapsulate cargoes during the cellular endocytosis process. The membrane curvature produced by these protein assemblies was measured using total internal reflection microscopy. These studies are designed to determine the mechanism for membrane vesicle formation in clathrin-mediated endocytosis, a critical process in synaptic transmission and cellular protein trafficking. Imperfections in the molecular scale functioning of endocytosis contribute to a range of serious health problems. Avi has returned to UT, where she studies with our collaborator, Professor Jeanne Stachowiak.